


Fare thee well, my Earth

by Tassos_vids (Tassos)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Exploration, Gen, NASA, Solar System, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5067952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos_vids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one is for the robots. A love letter to exploring our solar system.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vid: Fare thee well, my Earth

Fare thee well, my Earth  
for the robots  
  
Vid by Tassos  
Fandom: Space Exploration  
Rating: G  
Warnings: None  
Music: Erin Shore (Instrumental) by The Corrs  
  
Summary: This one is for the robots. A love letter to exploring our solar system.  
  
Downloads (right click save as)  
Medium: [135 MB .mp4](http://www.vastuniverses.com/Vids/For_the_Robots_Tassos_medium.mp4)  
  
[DW](http://tassosss.dreamwidth.org/326946.html) | [LJ ](http://tassosss.livejournal.com/343292.html)| [tumblr](http://tassosss.tumblr.com/post/131833343341/fare-thee-well-my-earth-for-the-robots-vid-by)  
  


 

 


	2. Vid Notes

I've always been a space nerd, so way back in July when New Horizons did its flyby of Pluto I was pretty excited. At one of the press conferences, one of the NASA dudes introducing the scientists showed a series of images, one of the sun and each planet in the solar system - that they could now complete with Pluto. Now, for the record I am fine with Pluto's downgraded status to dwarf planet - Ceres should be a planet too if Pluto is. But really I don't care what you name things, the names are irrelevant to a certain extent. The universe doesn't care what we call things - it's going to go ahead and be as infinitely varied and far stranger than anything we can put words to.  
  
The point is we, humankind, sent a little robot the size of a grand piano 3 billion miles away from our home just to check out this thing someone saw in a telescope once.  
  
And that is one of the most beautiful, wonderful things.  
  
I remember watching the coverage of Curiosity touch down on Mars. I've been to a rocket launch and the feeling is indescribable. It was like watching my nephew being born, a wonderful new thing, made with love and care going into the universe on its own. We have reached out and touched the heavens and gone on to see what they're made of in our tiny little corner solar system.  
  
This vid was inspired by New Horizons, but it was also inspired by [destina's vid, To Touch the Face of God](http://destina.dreamwidth.org/618.html), which is about the manned space program, which I fell in love with when I saw Apollo 13 four times in the theater as a kid, and then devoured all the other movies about it. I adored this vid when I saw it, and when I got it in my head to put this one together, hers is the vid I started rewatching to see how I could do mine.  
  
The accomplishments of the manned space program are astounding - the Moon! the Shuttle! the Space Station! - but so are the lesser known accomplishments of the robots we've sent to the other worlds in our solar system.  
  
The song is Erin Shore (Instrumental) by The Corrs. I've loved this song for a long time too. I first heard it dancing - it's a waltz, if you're wondering - so I wanted to capture the sense of the satellites and probes dancing through space. The music is for a traditional Irish song about leaving Ireland for America, which are also fitting for satellites and rovers we sent away who won't return. The lyrics to [The High Kings version are here if you want to check them out.](http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/the_high_kings/paddys_green_shamrock_shore.html)

*

  
A brief(ish) guide to the missions featured in the video. Please note that in 4 and half minutes I couldn't include everything - and I couldn't find footage of everything anyway. A big huge giant shoutout to NASA videographers, producers, and animators for all the footage. And ESA for the Philae stuff.  
  
Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon in 1969. The first probe we sent to another planet was Mariner 2 to Venus in 1962. It was Mariner 2 because Mariner 1 was destroyed during launch. Space travel, as easy as it sometimes seems is always risky. Mariner 4 was the first to flyby Mars in 1965.  
  
Pioneer 10 launched in 1972 and was the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt and see Jupiter in 1973. It went on to reach the edges of the solar system by the time radio communications was lost in 2003. Pioneer 11 launched in 1973 and was the second mission to reach the outer solar system, visiting Jupiter and for the first time Saturn.  
  
The Voyager missions launched in 1977. Both went to Jupiter and Saturn, and Voyager 2 went on to Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989) - sending back the only images we have of them and their moons. Now, Voyager 1 left the solar system in 2012, and is the farthest spacecraft we've ever sent from Earth. Both Voyagers are still communicating with us.  
  
Now we get out of the realm of first encounters and into the era of designing missions to stick around and study the planets and moons. Cassini and the Huygens lander for Titan launched in 1997. They did flybys of Earth, Venus, and Jupiter before entering orbit around Saturn in 2004. It’s in its extended mission now.  
  
Mars Odyssey launched in 2001 and is and continues to be the longest orbiter we’ve had around Mars, mapping its surface and looking for water. The other orbiters seen in the vid are the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2005) and MAVEN (2013). Following in the footprints of the Viking landers (1976) and Pathfinder (1997) its little Sojourner rover, Spirit and Opportunity were the second set of rovers to successfully land on Mars in 2004. Spirit became stationary in 2009 when it got stuck in soft soil, and lost contact in 2010. Opportunity is still going.  
  
Curiosity, launched in 2011, is the most recent rover with one of the most daring landings attempted successfully in 2012. (Fun fact: counting all nations’ missions to Mars only 1/3 have been successful.) It’s still going strong studying Mount Sharp.  
  
As for the rest of the inner solar system, after the Messenger was the first mission back to Mercury after a 1973 flyby by Mariner 10. Messenger launched in 2004, doing Venus flybys in 2006 and 2007 and a Mercury flyby in 2008 and then entered orbit in 2011. Mercury is actually really hard to get to, despite being relatively close. It ended its mission with a boom in 2015 with a controlled impact to Mercury’s surface. We haven’t really been back to Venus since either, though ESA and NASA both have projects in the works.  
  
Also in 2004, ESA's Rosetta/Philae mission to a comet launched. Which is one of the most amazing things - launching a tiny thing to hit another tiny thing at a point eleven years in the future where they will intersect. Rosetta reached the comet this year, 2015, and Philae landed, though with some bouncing that landed it in a shadow, on the surface.  
  
The Dawn mission to the asteroid belt launched in 2007, and is still going. It’s visited two of the larger things, Vesta, an oblong asteroid, and is now at Ceres, the other dwarf planet in our solar system (and the reason I’m fine with Pluto’s demotion).  
  
Finally, the mission to places other than the planets. The images of the sun are from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (2005) which constantly watches the sun. And Earth, our planet, seen from the Moon by Apollo 17 (1972), night lights from the Suomi-NPP (2011) weather and climate satellite in low Earth orbit, and DSCOVR the view from a million miles away that launched just this year, 2015. It’s here on Earth that we also have the Deep Space Network, the huge dishes seen at the beginning of the vid that since 1964 have been the only reason we can talk to our robots at the far distances of our solar system.  
  



End file.
